Can Mahayana Buddhism shed some meaning when it comes to the term afterlife?
Your question contains several errors about Buddhism, so I hope you’ll allow me to clear them up before going on to the question itself. First, Tantric Buddhism is generally considered a subset of Vajrayana (Tibetan) Buddhism. Vajrayana Buddhism is sometimes considered a subset of Mahayana Buddhism, and sometimes thought of as a separate tradition. In any case, Mahayana and Tantra are not identical. Second, “samadhi” is a term in Sanskrit, not Pali. “Samsara” is found in both Sanskrit and Pali, under slightly different renderings. Third, these two terms have nearly opposite meanings. Samadhi is a non-dualistic state of consciousness, while samsara refers to the continuous cycle of birth and death (with suffering in between). Fourth, Buddha did not reach any state *after* he died – when he passed away, he was dead. Nothing remained of his consciousness. Fifth, Buddha’s enlightenment was not the same as his experience of samadhi. Enlightenment is the total cessation of the mind-habits th
